A project as difficult and wide-ranging as the CIP needs the application of new technology to tackle the task rationally and realistically. The use of various kinds of information technology (with a precise and suitable methodology) has prevented the enormous amount of material accumulated during the various phases of the project from generating dramatic problems in managing the documentation. Instead, it has turned into a genuine “open-ended catalogue”, useful, right from the start, for epigraphic, linguistic and historical research.

Technically speaking, the project uses customized applications for processing data. All the data-banks created rely upon well known commercial software: relational databases with client-server architecture, programmed ad hoc. In this way it is possible to generate new data from the data already fed in, to organize the records functionally (in linked “tables”) and to share them, having available a single block of data brought up to date in real time. Members of the team can access this main block of data on-line thanks to a simple web-browser, independently of the type of hardware or system-software used.

The web and data-base servers of the project, funded by the CSIC and the Spanish Ministry of Scientific Research, are located in the CCHS (Madrid). These servers also give support to related projects, such as the WbAE or the DECF.